Overview

This American Life: Stories of Hope and Fear

This two-CD set presents 11 stories originally heard on the popular syndicated public radio show This American Life. If you're familiar with the program, you'll know what to expect here to some degree: diverse, often eccentric, often real-life tales, laid over whimsical pieces of music and sound effects used for accentuation and contrast. Even within the fairly limited space of an 11-story set (which does cover a good two hours and 20 minutes or so), however, it's impossible to generalize about what's on offer here. Just three of these are pieces in which someone is interviewed by show host Ira Glass, which might be the format for which the program is most known. In others, the protagonists themselves tell their stories; in one, a woman reads from a notebook she kept as a 13-year-old; in another, a list of "Fears of Your Life" is read by someone other than the writer; and the narrative by David Sedaris, the most celebrated figure whose voice is heard on these discs, is an obviously fictional (and somewhat cutesy) tale, "So a Chipmunk and a Squirrel Walk into a Bar." The stories themselves cover an extremely wide territory: a failed attempt to do standup "karaoke" comedy, a first-person account of the effects of changing gender from female to male, a recollection of a retarded sibling, and (the most amusing track) a play-by-play recount of a horrifying months-long dispute over a phone company bill. Wry humor might be the grace note most often sounded, but there's also hardship without pathos, complicated ambiguous familial tension and affection, and self-discovery both embarrassed and humble. The separation of the contents into a "Hope" disc and a "Fear" disc is fairly arbitrary, given how those emotions (and others) usually overlap within the stories. Depending on your inclinations, some stories will strike stronger chords than others. But these are strong, representative examples of what this long-running show has become known for in its lengthy stint on the airwaves.